Guide wires are used to facilitate percutaneous procedures in which the guide wire and often guide and working catheters are threaded into a human patient using X-ray guidance. The guide wires are manually threaded by a physician or other medical personnel but this requires that the operator be adjacent to the patient and so be in the immediate vicinity of the X-ray radiation providing the image used for guidance. Systems have been developed, such as that disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,887,549 incorporated herein by reference, which allow the guide wires and catheters to be threaded into the patient robotically and thus allow the user or operator to be remote from the patient and the X-ray radiation. However, this involves the guide wire being mechanically, as opposed to manually, driven. Thus there is a concern about the interaction between the surface of the guide wire and the driving mechanism of the robotic system which may involve drive wheels and idler wheels because the surface of the guide wire has been optimized for passage through the interior of the human body. Therefore it may have a somewhat slippery surface which is not optimum for interaction with the drive mechanism. This is also the case for robotically driven catheters. In addition the surface of the guide wire or catheter may be subject to damage or injury from its interaction with the drive mechanism, particularly when the drive mechanism involves wheels which apply a pinch force.